


with all the hope in my heart (and doubt in my mind)

by seren_ccd



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator: Dark Fate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:14:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21797461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seren_ccd/pseuds/seren_ccd
Summary: Sarah Connor has done this before.  Dani has not.  Post-Terminator: Dark Fate.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 46
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	with all the hope in my heart (and doubt in my mind)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amilyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amilyn/gifts).



> Oh, I had the best time writing this! I really hope you enjoy it! Title is song lyrics from White Lies' 'Somewhere to Hide'.
> 
> A huge 'Thank You!' to my lovely beta!

Dani has them both out of the dam before the authorities swarm the place. Sarah’s limping, and her arm is most definitely not where it’s supposed to be, but she keeps going. Because that’s what she does: she keeps the fuck going.

What’s reassuring about the whole situation is that Dani also seems to be one to keep the fuck going, because before Sarah knows it (she may or may not have blacked out briefly despite staying on her feet), she’s in a truck. Dani seems to have taken to driving, just like she’s taken to fighting for her life, and Sarah lets herself relax a little.

“Jesus,” she says after they get out of sight of the dam and all the flashing lights.

“What?” Dani asks, looking over. “We need to get you to a doctor.”

“Keep driving for now,” Sarah says. “Get at least another county or two over. And that’s not what I was thinking about.”

“What were you thinking about?” Dani asks, and Sarah can see the tear tracks on her cheeks and her knuckles white where they grip the steering wheel.

“I was thinking that you’re already much better at all this than I was,” Sarah says and manages a chuckle that makes her shoulder ache. “Bet you balanced your checkbook, too.”

Dani frowns. “Checkbook?”

Sarah shakes her head. “Forget it. You’re just...more capable than I was. I can tell.”

“Maybe,” Dani says quietly. “But then again, I have something you didn’t.”

“Better hair?” Sarah says, closing her eyes as the pain starts to take over.

“No,” she hears Dani say just before Sarah passes out. “A partner.”

* * *

Dani has her first nightmare a week after the events at the dam. They’re holed up in a motel the next state over, and Sarah’s shoulder is back where it should be, though her body is a patchwork of pain, but it’s not the first time, and it’s probably not going to be the last.

When Dani starts tossing and turning and soft, sad sounds spill from her mouth, Sarah is already awake. She’s in the bathtub, smoking a cigarette and staring at the tiles. She cocks her head to the side when she first hears Dani, and immediately, Sarah is back in that hospital bed in 1984 with tubes in her arms and one word still ringing in her ears.

 _Pregnant._

She’s pregnant and alone, and the father of her child ( _Kyle, Kyle, oh, God, Kyle_ ) is gone, and no one believes her about _any of it._

That was the first night Sarah had The Nightmare, and she dreamed of children blowing apart like burnt paper.

Cold tile against her cheek pulls Sarah out of the past, and she sits up from where she’s slumped over and blinks in the dim light.

In the other room, Dani calls out for her brother, then her father, and finally for Grace.

Ten of Sarah’s heartbeats go by where she considers not going to Dani. After all, no one ever came to Sarah.

 _And they really should have,_ John’s young and matter of fact voice says in her mind. _You shouldn’t have been alone for so long, Mom, you think?_

Sarah stubs the cigarette out on the bathtub rim and climbs out of the tub, then heads into the other room to wake Dani up.

* * *

They’re in a small local library in Colorado taking advantage of the free internet and newspapers when Dani says the inevitable:

“What if it’s not real?”

Sarah doesn’t look up from scrolling an aggregator of all the recent conspiracy theories, which have a tendency to get some stuff right once in awhile, as she says, “Which part?”

“All of it?”

It’s the soft way Dani speaks that has Sarah looking over at her. She’s surrounded by back issues of _Wired_ and _The Economist_ and is just staring at an article about Elon Musk. The plan was to try to see they could find even the faintest hint of Legion, and so far, there’s nothing, but that certainly doesn’t mean there won’t be.

But that’s not what Dani’s talking about, and Sarah knows it, so she leans back in her chair and says, “Did you know that when I got out of the hospital, I got my old job back?”

Dani looks at her, blinks and then says, “What did you do?”

“I was a waitress,” Sarah says. “Not a great one, but not terrible either. I think they felt kinda sorry for me, and they gave me some shifts.” She can almost feel the pinch of the apron around her stomach as it started to expand, and the smell of bacon grease fills her nose. “And there were times I could almost believe it had all been one horrible nightmare. Not that it didn’t happen,” she adds, “because _something_ fucking happened; everyone had to admit that. But the stuff about Judgment Day and Skynet and Kyle and the Terminator?” She shrugs. “I made it all up to cover the trauma of what actually happened.”

“But you told me there was a metal skeleton,” Dani says. “That you crushed it in a machine.”

“It ‘disappeared.’ I found out later that it was taken by the people who eventually developed Skynet, but at that time? It was gone, and only two people ever saw it.” She takes a deep breath. “And one of those people was dead and lacking a social security number, so it was easy for them to just tell me it was all in my head.”

Sarah closes her eyes. “And there were days I believed them. I really did. Maybe I just hallucinated the whole thing? I mean, a metal fucking skeleton? Nothing like that existed back then. And Kyle?” Her heart aches even as she speaks. “He was crazy. Beautiful and intense and compelling, but ultimately, fucking nuts, and I was hardly the first idiot to sleep with a crazy person and forget to use a condom.”

“You don’t mean that,” Dani whispers, looking horrified.

“No, I don’t,” Sarah says. “Because even though my mind was screaming at me to play the ‘what if’ game, what if it wasn’t real? What if Kyle was crazy? What if _I_ was crazy? I couldn’t. Because. It. Happened. All of it. That metal fuck killed my mother and my best friend and the father of my child. It. Happened.” Sarah swallows back tears that she can’t believe she still has left inside her to shed. “To deny the truth of what happened was to deny them, the people I loved, their truth. And I was damned if I was going to do that to them.”

Dani nods. “It happened. All of it. Grace and my family. That cyborg fuck killed them to get to me.”

“It happened, Dani,” Sarah says.

“So, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Dani says.

Then she picks up the next magazine and starts reading.

* * *

“I hate guns.”

Sarah pauses in the midst of cleaning a shotgun they picked up at a gun show a few counties over and says to Dani, “That’s inconvenient.”

“I hate them,” Dani says, holding the pieces of a handgun in her hands. “Always have. They don’t solve anything. They just destroy. They stop conversations, they don’t start them. They’re the opposite of constructive. Just the presence of a gun was enough to send a kid to prison or worse.” She shakes her head and drops the pieces on the table, frowning. “But here I am. Using guns. Buying guns. Because I have to. Because I’m someone’s vision of hope. It’s bullshit. It’s complete bullshit. It’s...”

Dani breaks off and just sort of vibrates as she stares at the guns on the table.

“Go ahead,” Sarah says.

“What?”

“Yell. Scream. Be angry.”

Dani looks over at Sarah with wide eyes. “I’m not angry.”

Sarah laughs. “Yes, you are.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes. You fucking are.”

“I’m...” Dani’s face falls. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says, setting the shotgun aside. “That about sums it up.”

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Shit!” Dani shoves her chair back and starts to pace. “How could she do this to me? How could she just appear and then leave me here with all of this, this, this shit? How could she do that? How? I could’ve...”

Dani breaks off and presses her lips together.

 _'Loved her'_ is what Sarah hears in the sudden silence, and Christ, if anyone gets it, Sarah does.

Kyle.

 _John_. 

God, she loved her son. Loved him with a fierceness that she knows was never healthy and bordered on obsessive. (Look, you don’t spend a good portion of your life in and out of mental institutions without picking up on a few things that happen to be correct. Broken clock being right twice a day and all of that. They were hellholes, but sometimes they had a point.)

“You need to acknowledge it, Dani,” Sarah says as she catches Dani’s eyes. “All that pain and anger you’ve got inside? Channel it. You have to. Otherwise, it’ll get away from you.”

“Did it get away from you?” Dani asks, sinking like a puppet with her strings cut to sit on the edge of the motel bed.

“Yeah,” Sarah says as she rubs her forehead and a bloody Miles Dyson on his living room floor with his family shielding him from her flashes in her mind. “A few times.”

“What stopped you?” Dani pauses. “Did anything stop you?”

“John stopped me,” Sarah says. “From the worst of it, John stopped me.”

“What stops you now?” 

Sarah shakes her head. “To be honest, nothing stops me now. Apart from you, I guess.”

“Lucky me,” Dani replies before she sighs. “I’m really angry, Sarah. Really, really angry.”

“I know you are,” Sarah says. “Want to go shoot things?”

Startled, Dani laughs.

* * *

After six months of prep, recon, and crash courses in weapons, the US Military, and defensive driving (which Dani has seriously taken to), they decide to take some direct action that involves getting onto an Army base to see if they can find any hint of Legion.

Only three days ago, they watched young Grace and her family, and Dani has been quiet ever since. But the silence doesn’t bother Sarah. It’s not a quiet that comes from grief, but from purpose and determination. Dani’s silence is charged, and the jeep practically vibrates with it as they sit watching the comings and goings of the base shift changes.

"You ready?" Sarah asks.

"I think so," Dani says, but she hesitates and Sarah looks over at her.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, just..." She pulls out a folded piece of paper. "I found this. It's not very clear, but I thought you might want it."

Sarah shoots her a look as she takes the paper and unfolds it. Her breath catches in her throat and her face crumples as she looks at a image of her son.

"John," she whispers as she runs the edge of her finger along his cheek.

Dani's right, it's not very clear at all and was obviously taken with a security camera at some point during that entire episode with the T-1000. John's running down a corridor and his features are blurred, but God, it's him. It's him on this paper in her hands and Sarah's eyes close as memories of her son flood her mind.

When she comes back to herself, Dani's hand is resting on her shoulder.

"Thank you," Sarah says.

"You're welcome," Dani replies. 

"Where'd you get it?" Sarah asks folding the paper back up, careful not to crease John's face, before she slips it into a pocket on her TAC vest.

Dani squeezes Sarah's shoulder and then drops her hand. "The library."

"You stole this from a library?" Sarah asks and actually manages a laugh.

"What can I say?" Dani says grinning. "I learned from the best. But you know, you don't need a picture of him to remember him?"

"I know," Sarah says. "But I'm glad to have it." She looks over at Dani. "You, out of anyone I've ever met, have the best chance to making it through what's to come. I want you to know that."

Dani smiles a little. "Thanks, but I hear a 'but' in there."

"But," Sarah says, "chances are we aren't going to win this."

"True," Dani says. "But we definitely aren't going to win this if we don't try."

Sarah nods. "Yeah." 

Thunder rumbles in the distance, and Sarah turns her head. Clouds roll over the mountains, and she can smell the ozone in the air.

“ _Viene una tormenta_ ,” Sarah murmurs.

“What?” Dani asks.

Sarah smiles, just a little, then says, “There’s a storm coming.”

Dani looks out the window just as lightning strikes in the distance and a rush of wind stirs the dusty valley.

“Yeah,” Dani says quietly. “I know.”

She starts up the jeep.


End file.
